Hi Sophia,
Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!
We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.
We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.
Important note!
Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.
If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.
Okay, let’s get started!
The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.
We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.
Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.
The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.
Regarding passion you picked Stage 6: I have an interest that is central to my identity. That is, what I do is an important part of who I am .
Regarding perseverance you picked .
As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.
Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.
In week 2, we looked at your interests.
Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.
Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.
Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.
In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.
You said your top three values were self-direction, benevolence, and stimulation.
You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.
When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was openness.
You said your top three talents were social, analytic, and verbal.
We then talked about goal hierarchies.
You said you had a pretty good idea about your top-level goal.
We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.
A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to internship .
Here is how self-concordant that goal was:
Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.
It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!
Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.
We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:
Work Smart
In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.
You WOOPed!
For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said .
For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said .
For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said .
For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: .
Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.
And here’s how much you learned
These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.
The important thing is that you learn something along the way!
In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.
You shared you’ve done daily practice in exercise .
We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.
In week 8, we discussed feedback.
Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!
You said you felt bad when receiving critical feedback, and bad when receiving positive feedback.
We then turned to learning about stress.
In week 9, you reported feeling an extreme amount of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being too many sources .
We also talked about adversity and failure.
Although related, adversity and failure are different:
Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.
However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…
Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.
And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.
We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.
Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.
You describe the habit you chose as Health .
Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.
Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?
So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.
In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.
Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.
Here’s how you described them:
You also wrote a gratitude letter to Parent .
In one word, you said it made you feel happy .
One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.
… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.
Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.
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Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?
Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.
| |
| success is a journey not a destination |
| Try things to develop an interest — learn though experience |
| effort counts twice |
| learning rate is a lost constant |
| practice makes perfect |
| advice is forward calling and feedback is going backwards in time |
| stress can be enhancing |
| systems > willpower |
| mentors are crucial |
| pay it forward |
In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.
Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:
| |
| Amina Marwan |
| Sophia's presence in our group has been truly uplifting, and her friendly demeanor has added a positive energy to our conversations. Sophia's genuine interest in during discussions is palpable and genuine -- and her willingness to share insightful perspectives and experiences enriches our discussions. I really appreciate how attentive Sophia is and how she remembers to ask follow up questions to things that we mentioned the week prior. I was really impressed by Sophia's dedication to her passion project -- especially that she reached out to Professor Barry Schwartz and is now working with him! |
| Jacob Scott |
| Sophia was great to have in our group! I looked forward to hearing about her week every time we met to debrief on the week. She always kept the conversation going, and was a joy to have in our group. I always thought it was hilarious when she would be so surprised hearing about Shi Ren's ultra marathon (I did too), and I really enjoyed having her in our group.
I really enjoyed hearing her journey on her discovery project, because she would tell us about what she was learning with decision making for her project. A lot of my studies here has to do with learning about how other people make decisions, so hearing from someone who was way more of an expert than myself was great. I enjoyed her presentation, and really am looking forward to seeing if she takes the project further! |
| Shi Ng |
| Hey Sophia!
I really enjoyed getting to know you the past couple months. I love our weekly catchups and how you always seem to be travelling somewhere. Keep living your best live! You also have such a calming demeanour about you that makes me feel relaxed talking to you. Compared to me you seem to be so emotionally stable haha. I still don't understand your major even though you tried explaining it but I hope you enjoy it before you get on the consulting grind!! Also I listened to your Huberman podcast recommendation which is so interesting, thanks for that! Even though we never managed to dress up as PB&J sandwiches for the run, I admire how quickly you were to agree to volunteer. You should try giving out medals at a race someday, it's super fun! Anyway keep bringing good vibes, hopefully we stay friends and do let me know if you're ever in Australia!! Free stay for you :)
I know I'm supposed to comment on your presentation but honestly I was too nervous to focus since it was my turn right after yours whoops. But I do remember thinking, "Damm those are some nice slides". I also liked your advice about being aware of the present bias since I do that all the time to procrastinate. I enjoyed hearing your progress throughout the term, and I thought it was funny how you asked some professor for advice but ended up having to do research for free but hopefully you learned a lot!
Keep smiling,
Shi Ren |
We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.
Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?
Drumroll please…
Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.
In any case, grit is not built in a day…
…remember that progress is never smooth…
…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.
With grit and gratitude,
Angela and the Grit Lab team.